[RD] Donald Trump accuses Barack Obama of illegal wiretap; calls for investigation

[Kennigit]

I did not see previous thread on this. The intent of this thread is to discuss whether a criminal investigation of former President Barack H Obama will occur and whether such investigation will uncover any criminal activity.


On Saturday March 04 2017, President Donald J Trump has accused former president Barack H Obama of illegally wiretapping him on par to the scale of Watergate.

He has called for criminal prosecution of Barack Obama by a lawyer for illegal Watergate-esque wire tapping, tweeting the following statements:

"Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!"

"I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!"

"How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

Here is a generic washington post article on the matter:
Link.

The President's twitter link is @realDonaldTrump

White house Press Secretary and Communications Director Sean Spicer has stated On Sunday, March 05 2017 that the White house is seeking an investigation into Barack Obama's administration during the 2016 campaign, tweeting the following:

"Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling. President Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016. Neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted."

For those keeping score at home, this is the first time in US history that a president of the United States has ordered an investigation into the previous administration for illegal abuse of power. The White House has done so with no evidence provided and with an explicit statement that no evidence will be provided.


Please discuss as you see fit.

Do you think Barack Obama will be investigated for criminal wiretapping activity in the Presidential election, or do you think there will be ramifications to the President of the United States falsely requesting investigations into political rivals and previous administrations stating that criminal activity has taken place?


**edit**

For those keeping score at home of Presidential attempts to consolidate real power to the President, On March 25, Donald Trump's administration has by a proxy called for the Speaker of the House to step down. This is not a call for criminal activity as was the purpose of this thread. For me as a concerned citizen, it is quite odd for the President to directly promote people calling for the Speaker to step down, and it is certainly unusual if not unprecedented for a President to do so in the first 100 days of his office.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

This is about the Trump campaign being part of the investigated in regards to the Russian hacking business. Trump is just trying to rewrite the narrative from "investigation of Russina interference led back to the Trump campaign" into some sort of "it was really Barack Obama trying to influence the election." Republicans will probably buy it, being the gullible bunch of clowns that they are.

 

[Perfection]

How the hell am I supposed to talk about this in a RD thread? The correct response is an expletive filled tirade.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There will be an investigation into Obama. It won't find anything but every piece of 'evidence' it produces will be disclosed to the public (even if it were illegal to do so as would be the case for classified information) and paraded about as definitive proof that Donald Trump is the second coming of Cheeto Jesus.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Oh, that could be fun. This has the potential to backfire when we really find out why a court deemed it necessary to wiretap Trump tower.

How the hell am I supposed to talk about this in a RD thread? The correct response is an expletive filled tirade.

Just do it. It's not like veteran like you is going to get banned.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Just checked Breitbart. No further investigation necessary. Trump tweeted it, so it has been accepted as truth.

 

[Zelig]

"Trump says some random nonsense again."

Same as every day.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

This is a blatant distraction tactic and a massive abuse of power. The Republicans will never hold one of their own accountable even as they perjure themselves over collaborating with Russian spies - even though perjury over oral sex was enough to impeach a Democrat. This country will suffer from a dysfunctional government and political reprisals until the Republicans are voted out en mass in 2018. Then we'll get Trump's impeachment and we'll begin trying to put this episode behind us.

I'm optimistic though.

I acknowledge there is a chance for catastrophe on a planetary-scale. Trump wouldn't actually have to delay a response to a Russian nuclear strike for 30 minutes, the Russians just have to think he would in order to justify an attack. We still live in a MAD world - a fact that I have begun to worry about for the first time in my 30 years on Earth. That's how crazy this situation is.

 

[Kennigit]

It is worth noting that every member of the US Congress who has commented so far have stated that they have not been made aware of any wiretapping into Trump tower or of the Trump campaign or staff during 2016. The former director of national intelligence James Clapper denied President Trump's allegation that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election, and that no FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which grants the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign powers" and "agents of foreign powers") had been issued.

There is some speculation that Trump's statements may be in reference to speculated surveillance of servers in Trump Tower or the possibility that a FISA had been granted in a lawful process (no one has stated that a FISA was granted yet).

There is also the larger context that is speculated that members of Trump's campagin, transition team, and Trump himself have conducted illegal dealings with agents of the Russian government or have lied about business conducted with Russian agencies and failed to disclose such dealings. Currently, many Democrats are accusing Jeff Sessions of lying under oath about his discussions with Russian ambassadors, who will be submitting an amended testimony to the US Congress.

As a reminder: lying under oath is a criminal offense known as "perjury".

 

[hobbsyoyo]

"Trump says some random nonsense again."

Same as every day.

Yes but the level of repercussions from the random things he says has continuously escalated. He could literally start a war via twitter.

Think about that. I'm terrified of what he will do and his actions are reflected by or even predicted by his own words.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It is worth noting that every member of the US Congress who has commented so far have stated that they have not been made aware of any wiretapping into Trump tower or of the Trump campaign or staff during 2016. The former director of national intelligence James Clapper denied President Trump's allegation that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election, and that no FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which grants the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign powers" and "agents of foreign powers") had been issued.

There is some speculation that Trump's statements may be in reference to speculated surveillance of servers in Trump Tower or the possibility that a FISA had been granted in a lawful process (no one has stated that a FISA was granted yet).

There is also the larger context that is speculated that members of Trump's campagin, transition team, and Trump himself have conducted illegal dealings with agents of the Russian government or have lied about business conducted with Russian agencies and failed to disclose such dealings. Currently, many Democrats are accusing Jeff Sessions of lying under oath about his discussions with Russian ambassadors, who will be submitting an amended testimony to the US Congress.

It's still early though. Give the Republican leadership time to war game scenarios where they can legally conduct a far-reaching witch hunt investigation into Obama and Democrats and they'll do it. Party over country, after all.

They just need a little time to figure out how to implement their marching orders from the President. I mean they just got them through twitter at the same time as the rest of the planet so it's easy to understand why they don't have a game plan ready to go straight off the bat. But they'll pull together and we'll get a few more years of constant Benghazi-style hearings while purges begin in every federal agency and department.

 

[Kennigit]

"Trump says some random nonsense again."

Same as every day.

This can shake up to be grounds for impeachment though, or at least the option to invoke the 25th amendment to declare the President "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and have the Vice President take over as acting President (who at this time is unfortunately Mike Pence)

This is it. The President of the United States is (in my view) probably making a completely false and baseless claim to investigate the previous President of the United States. If something were to tell you the President is unable to perform the duties of his office, it would be attempting to jail political opponents with no evidence presented.

 

[Zelig]

Yes but the level of repercussions from the random things he says has continuously escalated. He could literally start a war via twitter.

Think about that. I'm terrified of what he will do and his actions are reflected by or even predicted by his own words.

That's on the system.

If you put a 5 year-old in charge and people take him seriously, you're going to have bad results. Insulting or ascribing malicious intent to the child doesn't do much to fix the problem of people taking him seriously.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

That's on the system.

If you put a 5 year-old in charge and people take him seriously, you're going to have bad results. Insulting or ascribing malicious intent to the child doesn't do much to fix the problem of people taking him seriously.

Fair point but I'm not insulting him so much as pointing out how truly awful he is. I'm not trying to inflame for the sake of inflaming but to give my assessment and share my sense of alarm.

What you posted amounts to a insult though, so I'm not sure what angle you're coming from.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

This can shake up to be grounds for impeachment though, or at least the option to invoke the 25th amendment to declare the President "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and have the Vice President take over as acting President (who at this time is unfortunately Mike Pence)

This is it. The President of the United States is (in my view) probably making a completely false and baseless claim to investigate the previous President of the United States. If something were to tell you the President is unable to perform the duties of his office, it would be attempting to jail political opponents with no evidence presented.

Unfortunately, at this point an impeachment depends on the Republican leadership coming to their senses. I don't think that is going to happen. They will continue backing him no matter what until they lose the midterm elections or 2020 rolls around.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

This is a blatant distraction tactic and a massive abuse of power. The Republicans will never hold one of their own accountable even as they perjure themselves over collaborating with Russian spies - even though perjury over oral sex was enough to impeach a Democrat. This country will suffer from a dysfunctional government and political reprisals until the Republicans are voted out en mass in 2018. Then we'll get Trump's impeachment and we'll begin trying to put this episode behind us.

What exactly does it take for a party to be banned in the USA ?
If the Republicans were a party in Germany they'd already be under surveillance for their extremist and authoritarian tendencies, and most of their candidates during the primaries would be fined for hate speech. They're winning elections by subverting the political process, and now they've added casual treason to the list. Not that they didn't do occasional treason before with Iran-Contra or the outing of a CIA agent. And half of the country seems fine with it.
I'm seriously worried about how low they can go, and lately I've been asking myself if there is a realistic scenario where the USA doesn't devolve into a dictatorship or a civil war within my lifetime. Getting rid of Trump won't fix anything if Mike Pence becomes president and/or his enablers remain political players.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The various constitutional amendments make it effectively impossible to ban a party through legal means. That didn't stop the government from conducting illegal shutdowns of parties like the communists in the past but ostensibly, it can't legally happen any more. For the most part it really doesn't happen anymore unless the group begins taking violent actions such as the KKK but those groups don't usually purport to be political parties, just associations of hate.


I share all of your concerns. It's scary as hell for me.

 

[Kennigit]

I'm not kidding that this is going to escalate to be the biggest event in US history in terms of the legitimacy of the US presidency. This is the kind of thing that generals and admirals of the Armed Forces will have to comment on. You can't have an unstable Commander-in-Chief. The armed forces were required by law to be loyal to the US Constitution and had Obama as their Commander in Chief for 8 years. And for what it is worth, Donald trump also is tweeting out mad about anything and everything Russia related (saying Schumer, Pelosi should be investigated, and implicitly implying Obama was colluding with the Russians for a 2012 statement made on camera with a Russian representative that he (Obama) would have more flexibility after the 2012 election, the context being that Obama would not ever have another election to answer to). Donald Trump is floating out there soft accusations of treason.

His very loyal base will eat it up, but all the senior ranking officials of the armed forces will have to be ready to say "we support the notion that former president Obama committed illegal acts and that everything Trump is doing is above board and fit to have in charge of the US military". Senior officials who hypothetically have dutifully served the President for 20, 25+ years, independent of political affiliations.

As well as anyone else that serves for government. This can't slide the way any stupid policy could (build a wall, halt immigration, repeal Obamacare, abolish the EPA, whatever).

Of course, if any evidence is provided by the Trump administration, this would very well be a Watergate 2.0.

The alternative is that we have a compromised administration, all the way up to the President himself, acting on behalf of only their interests and possibly for treasonous interests. And everyone discusses treason in the context of foreign agents, but if Trump starts stating anything more explicit about Obama other than call for an investigation (e.g. like what he did with Hillary Clinton, that she should be in jail), well......I'd imagine threatening the former Commander-in-Chief with no basis could almost be seen as an attack on the sovereignty of the United States.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Does it not terrify you that we're even talking about having the military weighing in on our politics?

I agree this is going to be a massive political scandal but he's going to be 'winning' (for lack of a better word) until the Republicans get voted out. I can't stress the party over country mentality strongly enough and so I keep repeating it.

This will not end good for anyone. The entire country is going to suffer in ways we can't predict.

The alternative is that we have a compromised administration, all the way up to the President himself, acting on behalf of only their interests and possibly for treasonous interests.

This is what I assume to be the truth of the matter.

 

[uppi]

Didn't he get the memo from the NSA that everything is fair game by now (as long as you whisper "national security" in a secret court)?